Be! Mooney
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (Faber) and The Sirian Experiments by Doris Lessing (Cape) are, on the surface, very different kinds of book — the one written in prose that shimmers (sometimes dissolving into obscurity), the other almost dry in tone. I do not remember much hooha about either, but perhaps that is because the more recent glittering prizes have stunned recall. My prize goes to both, because they are virtuoso analyses of experience that is beyond the ordinary, yet is profoundly symbolic of our ordinary human fate. Individual loneliness or extra-terrestrial conflict? You can take your choice, even within the contents of Donald Davie's magnificent New Oxford Book of Christian Verse. In an imaginative introduction Davie explains the limits he has set himself, but still manages to encompass a wide variety of faith and doubt. To include so many hymns was a master-stroke; I cannot recall another collection where Keble, Cowper, Watts and Wesley have been gently but firmly presented, not as pious versifiers, but as poets. The agnostic will find this anthology unsettling, if only because of the resonance of those old hymns. With jolly, coloured angels on the jacket it is a perfect Christmas present, and sits nicely beside the other anthologies of love poetry.
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